There’s more tur­moil to re­port from in­side No­var­tis’ CAR-T camp.

On Fri­day Karen Walk­er will leave a se­nior po­si­tion in charge of CMC/man­u­fac­tur­ing of CAR-Ts for No­var­tis in ex­change for a new po­si­tion she’s tak­ing at Seat­tle Ge­net­ics, End­points News has learned.

Walk­er — the VP Glob­al Head Cell and Gene Ther­a­pies Tech­ni­cal De­vel­op­ment and Man­u­fac­tur­ing at No­var­tis — was one of three se­nior ex­ecs put in charge of the cell and gene ther­a­py ini­tia­tive at the com­pa­ny last fall, ac­cord­ing to sources close to the com­pa­ny, af­ter a bruis­ing re­struc­tur­ing over the sum­mer in which the unit was chopped up and ab­sorbed in­side a huge R&D or­ga­ni­za­tion. Samuele Butera was put in charge of the com­mer­cial/busi­ness as­pect of the group while David Leb­wohl han­dles clin­i­cal ops.

“Karen Walk­er will join Seat­tle Ge­net­ics as Vice Pres­i­dent of Glob­al Qual­i­ty in mid-April,” con­firmed a spokesper­son for Seat­tle Ge­net­ics.

I con­tact­ed Er­ic Al­thoff, a spokesper­son for No­var­tis, Wednes­day night, but af­ter ac­knowl­edg­ing my query he did not fol­low up. Al­thoff has de­clined to re­spond to a fol­lowup query.

No­var­tis has been bleed­ing tal­ent through­out its glob­al or­ga­ni­za­tion for the past year. Walk­er’s de­par­ture, though, comes at a par­tic­u­lar­ly crit­i­cal stage for No­var­tis, just days af­ter the phar­ma gi­ant gained a pri­or­i­ty re­view for CTL019, putting it on a short path to per­haps the first his­toric ap­proval for a CAR-T.

Last sum­mer End­points broke the sto­ry about No­var­tis’ re­or­ga­ni­za­tion in CAR-T, which led the group’s top ex­ec, Us­man ‘Oz’ Azam, to leave No­var­tis. About 120 staffers were al­so ter­mi­nat­ed as the sep­a­rate group was pulled back in­to the R&D struc­ture.

No­var­tis has kept up a neck-and-neck race with Kite on the lead pro­gram, which has its own pi­o­neer­ing CAR-T head­ed to the FDA.

Man­u­fac­tur­ing in this field is crit­i­cal. To make this ther­a­py, physi­cians ex­tracts cells from can­cer pa­tients and then reengi­neer them with a chimeric anti­gen re­cep­tor to guide them to at­tack can­cer cells. The re­vised cells are then in­ject­ed back in­to pa­tients. To be com­pet­i­tive, a com­pa­ny has to prove not on­ly that they know how to make the ther­a­py, they al­so have to be able to turn it around quick­ly for use.

You don’t go more than 40 years in biotech without ever getting a product to market unless you can learn the art of writing a promotional press release. And Inovio captures the prize in baiting the hook.

Tuesday morning Inovio, which has been struggling to get its Covid-19 vaccine lined up for mass manufacturing, put out a release that touched on virtually every hot button in pandemic PR.

There was, first and foremost, an interim snapshot of efficacy from their Phase I program for INO-4800.

A cancer-fighting concept from the inventor of the first cancer vaccine is nearing prime time, and its biotech developer has received a significant new infusion of cash to get it there.

Bolt Biotherapeutics announced a $93.5 million Series C round led by Sofinnova Investments and joined by more than 9 others, including Pfizer Ventures and RA Capital Management. That money will go toward pushing the San Francisco biotech’s platform of innate immune-boosting warheads through its first trial on metastatic solid tumors and into several more.

A year and a half after scoring a $70 million Series B and a top Gilead executive as CEO, Akero Therapeutics has announced new data on their NASH drug. And with the field still reeling from a surprise FDA rejection this week, the news was enough to send their stock surging.

Akero had already said in March that its lead drug had beaten placebo in its Phase II trial, reducing liver fat by 14% in the highest dose group compared to 0.3% in placebo, according to MRI scans. But although NASH is an obesity-related condition and results from fatty buildup in the liver, the real immediate question for any therapy is whether it can resolve the fibrosis and inflammation that results from that buildup. Those data require biopsying the patients, a longer and more invasive process that was further complicated by a pandemic.